Hide
by TheInsaneLoricWhovian
Summary: Hide. It's the one word he lives by. One-shot about Three's Cepan.


**Hide**

_Hide._

It's the one word he lives by. He's never liked running, not really, even back on Lorien as a child, still at school, still worrying over cut knees and not knowing what his adulthood would hold.

None of the other kids had liked playing with him, he'd been rubbish at games like tag because he would just stand there, and he'd excelled too well at hide and seek, finding the strangest places to hide so he no one ever found him.

It wasn't that couldn't run, or course he could, he just… didn't like it.

How many years ago had that been now, _how many lifetimes?_ Even now it still stuns him into silence when he remembers in the quiet moments when he was cooking or lying in his cot, that everyone he had once known and loved, were gone.

The teenage Kabarak worker he'd met the day before Harvestmoon._(Harvestmoon; that term is so __**alien**__ to him now, like a dream which had passed him by„ the word gives him nostalgia and want for better days) _The girl he'd had a crush on while studying to be a mentor Cepan. His charge's _(Hannu, Three, his entire world)_ parents.

His eyes wonder to his charge. He's not sleeping, not yet anyway. He can tell by the way he holds himself. He thinks about the other Garde, wonders what part of the world they are in.

When he and Three had come to earth, this was the first place he had come to. A measly little village at the edge of no place, surrounded by starvation and poverty, a tiny, minuscule place

He imagines some hiding out in the places the aid workers came from, America and England being among the top few, others in places similar to this, but more isolated - at this he reminisces a conversation he had on the spaceship with Albert.

_("If they ever find us on earth, Five and I, I'll find somewhere no one can find us. An island in the middle of the ocean. Just the two of us. They'll never get to him. Not while I'm still breathing.")_

Or, perhaps, the other side of the world all together, surrounded by snow and ice on all sides. He didn't know. He probably never would.

How sad is to think, that, if their entire race were in the room right now, they'd probably fit.

The Cepan who came here with him, where are they?

Hessu and Conrad, if Three's scars were anything to go by, were almost certainly dead. But what of Brandon? Sandor? Kentra and Adel? Reynolds? Albert? Were they still alive, with their Garde and honing their legacies?

A crack flows through the air, vibrating through the mahogany wood.

It is, he thinks, like a tree branch has been snapped in half, except, in this case…

It was like an entire tree had been broken.

He rises out of bed, getting to his feet as he feels his charge flinch in the clot beside him.

"What was that?"

Slowly, heart pounding in his chest, he makes his way towards the door…

Something was wrong, it was silent.

It was _never_ silent.

_"Shhh!"_

There was only one possible conclusion, but he did not want to face it. Did not want to admit that he would never again share a meal with his charge underneath the rich Kenyan sky. Does not want to admit it is over, that even though he had hidden so well for so long, there had always been the chance he could be found.

He clings onto this hope even as he looks through the latch and sees his nightmare confirmed. Standing there, sword in hand, is a **Mogadorian**. He barely hears himself whisper in denial before he's in agony.

His charge screams.

He would have thought it funny his last words were the opposite of his life's teaching, if he hadn't been too shocked by the return of the enemy, too terrified for his charge.

_Hide. _It was the one word he lived by, it was the one word which led to this moment, his very own death, to his charge's life being in such danger and so it was only fitting his last word would be,

**"Run."**

And so, he falls to the floor as his charge runs through the back wall as he had told him to do so many times if it ever came to this, another victim of the war he had forgotten so many times he belonged to.

At least there is solitude in the fact, that when he opens his eyes, he is surrounded by those he had thought lost, and he cries.

Because he's free, and he doesn't have to hide (or run) any more.

He's still crying into the lush grass (just like the grass outside his house on Lorien), when his charge sinks down beside him and says, "It's okay,"

It only makes him cry harder.

His charge does not have to fight any more, does not have to live under something he , he can have the life that was meant for him. He can be with his family, he can, in this strange place he did not yet understand, _live._

_Hide. _It was the one word his charge had been taught his entire life.

But now, he didn't have to.

"Come on, let's go meet the others Dad," His charge tugs at his arm, suddenly a young child again, no more than four years old.

He raises his eyes, and hugs his charge, an infinite number of suns shining, and walks away from his life in hiding and into a new one, with his charge by his side.

He'd rather run in this place forever than hide in his other one anyway.

**A/N: *sniff* I wrote this for the Lorien Legacies Countdown Cepan week 1 on Tumblr and I think I got a bit carried away. I like it though, and I hope you do too. **


End file.
